A Tsunami of Mercy and Justice and Love

I have been having an IKEA moment. After moving to our new home it seemed we had been spending money like (as my dad used to say) it was going out of style, so when my husband pointed out that I was tripping over the armoire that I had lovingly selected in Philadelphia two decades ago I decided to replace it with a simple chest of drawers. IKEA won my bidding war because it had a piece the right size and shape and color and it was not only inexpensive but also on sale. So much for the easy way out though. Actually I enjoyed the first couple of hours of assembly, which went swimmingly and was even sort of fun. It reminded me of the 1980s when all of our furniture came from IKEA and had to be assembled, usually on Saturday night for some reason. Anyway, as I approached the final step of putting the top on, the entire structure crashed to the floor, and even worse, of course the particle board splintered where joiners had been secured. Woe was me, and more to the point I had a mess on my hands. I gave up, but then worried about it all night. First thing the next day I tried to put it back together, but it became clear the splintering was so bad it would never be stable without intervention.

Now, while I had been worrying through the night I had kept thinking that I knew what to do—I had to drill new holes and insert long heavy-duty screws to hold the frame together. But, like most people facing a problem, I tried every which way to get out of it. I called the famous help-line at IKEA. The first guy I spoke with said they would gladly replace the two wooden pieces that were messed up, then transferred me to someone who would ship them, but that call hung up on me. I called back three times, but IKEA’s phone system had my number (so to speak) and kept hanging up on me. I cruised through want ads online sure I had seen one some place recently for someone who would fix IKEA assembly problems, but no luck. Finally, facing a sprawling mess on the floor and the prospect that I had just thrown that money down the drain, I did what I should have done in the first place. I got my drill and my toolbox full of screws and some wood glue to boot, and in no time I had the piece assembled, standing up, sturdy and with its top in place. I kept thinking there was a lesson in there somewhere.

How often do we read the stories in the scripture literally, trying to imagine ourselves in the story, rather than comprehending them metaphorically? In Luke 16 Jesus tells a story about a corrupt “manager” (I’m pretty sure older translations called this person a “steward” but who would know what that meant today?) What do we know about corrupt managers? All I could think of was the episode of I Love Lucy where Ricky so wants to become the nightclub manager that he puts Lucy on a horrific schedule. Hilarity ensues, the schedule gets shredded and at the end everyone congratulates Ricky on becoming “Mr. Manager.”

But I digress. The key to this parable is the part, of course, where the manager forgives a large portion of everyone’s debt. It is, on the face of it, an act of love, and it works, not only presumably are the debtors happy but the boss is pleased because the manager, at last, has done the right thing—the thing he knew was right in the first place.

There is more. The act is more complex than we imagined, because the portion of the debt that was cancelled was the manager’s commission. Not only has he given back, but he has given back his portion. But what he has given is multiplied, isn’t it, in the hearts of those who have received not only mercy but justice. The manager, by doing not only what was right, but what he had known all along was right, has changed the situation by creating space for love to fill.

This is what Jesus means by “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” The promise is that the eternity of living in love is guaranteed by the building up of love not in just one heart but in everyone’s hearts spreading through creation as the simple act of doing the right thing creates love through mercy and justice.

And that reminded me of marriage equality. Back in the days of my youth my gay coupled friends all said they didn’t need marriage, that that was something heterosexual people had created for themselves that gay people didn’t need. And straight society was just as firm in its conviction that marriage was not meant for us. Never mind the historical reality that marriage in its earliest times was not gender-oriented. Never mind that even the Old Testament has examples of same sex love. Never mind that everyone knew what was right all along, but ran all around proverbial barns trying to ignore it. But what did we learn when marriage equality became a cascading force? We learned that doing the right thing created space for mercy and justice. We learned that mercy and justice created space for love. We who are gay married people learned that marriage really does change everything because it binds two people and their families together in love. And binding love spreads through an ever more loving creation.

There you have it—from IKEA to the crafty manager to I Love Lucy to marriage equality. What have we learned? That doing the right thing is always the right thing to do; that being faithful in a very little is as powerful as being faithful in much; that giving a little bit of love can cascade into a tsunami of mercy and justice and love.

 

Proper 20 (Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 79:1-9; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13)

©2019 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.